her district. And it _was_ an awful place! I shudder even now when I
think of the sights and sounds and dreadful language I saw and heard
there--but I must not turn aside from what I have to tell. I pass
over our visits to various families and come at once to the reputed
miser. She was in bed, and from her flushed face and glittering eyes
I could see that she was in high fever. She started, raised herself
on an elbow, and glared at us as we entered.

"I was deeply interested in her from the first moment. Although worn
and thin, with lines of prolonged suffering indelibly stamped on her,
she had a beautiful and refined face. Her age appeared to be about
thirty-five. A lovely, but wretchedly clothed girl, of about fourteen
years of age, sat on a low stool at her bedside. And oh! such a bed
it was. Merely a heap of straw with a piece of sacking over it, on a
broken bedstead. One worn blanket covered her thin form. Besides
these things, a small table, and a corner cupboard, there was
literally nothing else in the room.

"The girl rose to receive us, and expressed regret that she had no
chairs to offer. While Miss Love went forward and talked tenderly to
the mother, I drew the girl aside, took her hand affectionately, and
said, `You have not always been as poor as you now are?'

"`No indeed,' she said, while tears filled her eyes, `but work failed
us in London, where we once lived, and mother came to Liverpool to a
brother, who said he would help her, but he died soon after our
arrival, and then mother got ill and I had to begin and spend our
savings--savings that darling mother had scraped and toiled so hard to
gain--and this made her much worse, for she was _so_ anxious to save
money!'

"This last remark reminded me of the reports about the mother's
miserly nature, so I asked a question that made the poor girl reply
quickly--

"`Oh! you mustn't think that darling mother is a miser. People so
often fall into that mistake! She has been saving for ever so many
years to buy father back--'

"`Buy father back!' I repeated, with a sudden start.

"`Yes, to buy him from the Algerine pirates--'

"I waited for no more, but, running to the bedside, looked the poor
woman steadily in the face. There could be no doubt about it. There
was the fair hair, blue eyes, and clear complexion, though the last
was sadly faded from ill-health.